Did You Know...

posted Apr 23rd, 2013 -
Teams and competitors in Florida were not favored by the weather last weekend. Only seven teams were able to beat the weather to a certain extent and post the first 2013 outdoor scores. Weather was not a problem at the next FSL Tunnel Kicker at iFLY Orlando last night.

Head coach Ari Perelman had invited skydivers in Florida once again to join the event, which is generously supported by iFLY Orlando. The group was another mixture of teams, competitors and new participants who have not trained indoor or outdoor with a 4way team. Several of the flyers had competed on the weekend and came back for additional indoor flying time a day or two later.

The Florida Skydiving League was catching up with scores from SkyVenture New Hampshire where Brian Touhey had uploaded the first videos and scores of the month.

Florida had eight lineups for the six categories at the competition session late at night. The participants first trained in different groups after arrival. The coaches then helped put together the lineups for the last flying session with the competition sequences of the month.

New participants fly with up to two player coaches in the Rookie A and Rookie AA Class. The traditional Rookie Class teams (Rookie AAA), AA and A Class teams may use one player coach in the lineup.

This time, the Florida group even had an internal competition. There were two lineups in the Rookie AAA Class who pushed each other to the final scores, and another two Rookie AA Class lineups tried to make it onto the Indoor Cloud League leaderboard for Florida with their scores. Mikaela Fernandez, Noelle Mason, Robert Harris and player coach Ari Perelman (18) outscored Sebastian Jimenez, Jon Agar, Steve Hubbard and Hal Spence (13) who had three point deductions.

Rookie AAA Ari

Rookie AAA Hal

Mr. Purple (left) with Mr. Pink at the NSL Championship 1999

The internal winner in the Rookie AA Class (Santiago Rosell, Craig Sagalow, Glen Hauenstein, Gilles Dutrisac) posted 25 points for Florida. The complete Pyro4ic lineup (Rebecca Kristof, Frederic Bonneville, Matthew Hillson, Grant Underland) were shortly behind with a 22-pointer. The participants have to move up into the next higher category after scoring 20+ points for a sequence twice.

The winning lineup included Glen Hauenstein in the Center Inside slot, who founded the Georgia Skydiving League in 1997 and trained and competed with Mr. Pink many years ago. He attended the FSL Tunnel Kicker for the first time after a long absence from 4way competition and indoor training.

The currently three groups of the Indoor Cloud League have one more week to upload videos and improve their scores. Jan Klapka of the Czech Republic Skydiving League may soon join the monthly indoor competition with a new group and challenge the US teams.